Ouroboros
by Steals Thyme
Summary: Nothing ever ends; Rorschach struggles with the eternal return. AU. Gen for now, epic UST in future. Warnings for major character death and Rorschach's casual bigotry.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: Obligatory post-Karnak AU. No, wait! Where are you going? :) I don't intend for this to be a happily-ever-after fixit. Other than that, we'll see.  
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**_I am no longer updating on ff dot net - I'll be continuing this on AO3 and on my LJ, see profile for links._**

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A gale howls, the noise permeating this bleak fortress like an uneasy spirit, although the chill fingers of the Antarctic wind can never penetrate its monolithic walls. Rorschach thinks of a shroud of snow, of blinding white falling over granite and obliterating it from the world, entombing and silent. He thinks of a bitter end.

Ozymandias is talking and talking, an endless expository monologue that has been meticulously rehearsed, every phrase afforded its own careful weight and cadence. His words are a counterpoint to the violent storm outside; his voice echoes against blood-smeared marble, reverberates around the immense chamber and shudders the last few clues into place, everything interlocking and smooth like a completed jigsaw puzzle.

This is the part that Rorschach usually takes the most pleasure in, satisfaction beyond the primal gratification of snapping bone. There is no satisfaction to be had here, though. This time, he is not the one pressing the final piece into place. He is not the one standing back to admire the completion of a job done well. There is nothing admirable about this.

The finished picture is a horror, a Lovecraftian monstrosity underpinned by something very human and gallingly sanctimonious. So convinced of its own righteousness that even a million screaming souls could not perturb it.

They've been played for fools, every step along the way. Manipulated by one of their own, by this golden puppeteer. Strings jerked in a _danse macabre_, and for all their striving, they couldn't snarl the wires. They didn't even _see_ the wires. He is shaking, whole body vibrating with a brittle, harsh fury and a swelling despair that threatens to overwhelm him, seeping up through his skin and leaking into the gulf between his face and his disguise.

Daniel stands beside him, form obfuscated in that ridiculous cape. He is shivering too, the plush fabric magnifying every small shudder.

He sees Silk Spectre move in the periphery of his vision, a drift of yellow and snow-burned pink. She slips her hand under the cape to rest on Daniel's arm, either seeking comfort or offering it. Possessive, either way. Rorschach spares a glance at Manhattan; he is stoic and unreadable, waiting to be told what to do.

A strange notion emerges from his churning thoughts, a sudden selfish desire for Manhattan to react, make some autonomous response, to reclaim. Make it so that Daniel is—

Veidt is still talking.

"No," Daniel says. He sounds small, weak. His voice doesn't fill the air the way that Veidt's does, lacks the glamor and the flair, the alluring quicksilver quality—but it still stops Veidt mid-sentence. "No, you can't do this, Adrian."

"Do this, Dan?" The amusement in Veidt's voice is affected. He is like rock under that glittering exterior. Must be, to not have crumbled under the weight of his actions. "It is already done."

Daniel doesn't believe it. Cannot, simply cannot comprehend what Veidt is capable of. In his naiveté, probably imagines that Veidt _wants_ to be stopped, and so he is rallying to a battle that is already fought and lost. The snow owl falls to cold marble, a swirl of white reflected against the dark polish of the stone in captivating balance. "No," he says again, and Silk Spectre clutches at his arm as he lunges forward.

"Dan," she says, voice wavering even on that single syllable. Perhaps she has been crying. Rorschach feels nothing at that.

Daniel takes her hand, is gentle when he removes it from his arm. He draws himself up. He is Nite Owl now, truly Nite Owl in a way he hasn't been since 1975; since everything had broken around them and between them, and inside him. Since Rorschach had split open and cauterized, expelling everything he had thought he did not need.

He still remembers the way the sky had disappeared, obliterated by heavy smoke and heavier ink; the way Daniel had found him, his eyes the last two stars that must be extinguished. He was too noble for it all, shined too brightly, and Rorschach was too newly reborn, too brutal and unchecked. He had gutted him there on the filthy sidewalk, spilled the hero onto unhallowed ground and left Nite Owl to shrivel away until there was only Daniel Dreiberg left; tired, hurt, disillusioned and ready to give up.

He thinks of old ghosts, and of regrets.

Veidt is reaching for something in his belt, and he thinks _no, no_ because Daniel is not going to back down, and he is human and vulnerable beneath the costume, beneath the persona. What kind of weapon does Veidt have, what kind of technology? Veidt points, and presses, and Rorschach feels his gut tighten even as he wills himself to move, as everything slows to a crawl—but there is no retort of gunfire, nor the high-frequency whine of a laser. The television bank behind him flickers into life, illuminates their hopeless tableau in harsh artificial light.

There is a moment of terrible silence.

"I did it," Veidt says, breathless, tearful. A monstrous limb arcs over Madison Square Garden, discharging ichor from its oozing, punctured skin. There is blood, viscous and black. "I did it!"

More and more monitors offer grisly commentary; the streets of New York run red, gutters bubbling like a severed artery. He feels anguish wash over him with every new visual; every shattered building; every pale, wild-eyed reporter; every still body. It tears the breath from his lungs and he cannot draw more in, he's drowning in the imagery that assaults him. He feels pressure on his arm; Daniel has seized him, fingers digging like talons. He's shaking violently.

—_alien contact, or_—

"Don't you see?" Veidt says. His eyes are shining, and Rorschach wants to put them out.

—_the dead, the insane... there are children_—

Silk Spectre—Laurel—is spitting words at him, rage and grief smeared down her face in symmetrical black rivulets. She has never looked so fierce and terrifying; despair makes her a valkyrie. Veidt calmly smiles at her, serene in the face of her wrath.

—_an end to the war in_—

"Let's compromise," he says. The words are poison, the antithesis of everything that lives in Rorschach, that steels his fists, runs in his blood, quickens his face. To hear them uttered so brazenly from this man who stands silhouetted by genocide, haloed by the atrocity he has wrought, is stunning. It is profane.

—_millions, millions dead_—

Daniel moves before he can, takes the steps up to Veidt's altar two at a time. Rorschach lets a fierce pride flare briefly beneath the wretchedness when Daniel strikes Veidt cleanly across the jaw, sleek bronze lines and an intense snarl and for a moment it's just like old times, just like—

But he's overextended himself, has let his momentum carry him too far and telegraphed his next move like an amateur and it's bad, very bad, because Veidt isn't caught unawares any more, he's dropped into a combat stance and he's still fit and fast and Daniel isn't, _Daniel_—

There is a sound like cracking ice, sharp and cold.

Veidt straightens slowly, looking at his hands as if he hadn't known his own strength. Disingenuous to a fault. A corona of tentacles frames him.

Laurel gasps. Perhaps it was supposed to have been a scream.

"I'm sorry." Veidt holds his hands out, palms upturned as though seeking forgiveness. "I'm sorry that had to happen." He says it as though he had expected a different response. As though Daniel would have rolled over and accepted this madness.

Something gives.

Rorschach falls to his knees, fabric of his pants sliding on the smooth marble and making him scrabble for purchase; dignity is a useless concept. His fedora slaps faintly as it hits the floor. His gloves squeak and slip so he tears them off. Daniel's skin is warm against his fingertips.

"Daniel," he tries to say. It sounds like a low whine in the back of his throat. His ears roar. Rorschach can't breathe, can't swallow; he's struck deaf and dumb and he is choking on this, suffocating. _Dead and dead and dead, three million and one, three million and two_—

"Do something!" Laurel is crouched over Daniel too, sitting on the other side of him, fingers curled into his shoulder. They flank him like guardians. _They bring their chosen to Valhalla, bear them mead_. "Jon, you can fix this, can't you? Please Jon, god, _please_..."

The world narrows to a pinprick, Laurel's pleading and Manhattan's indifferent responses are nothing but steady white noise. Rorschach already knows it is no use, can feel an incomprehensible ache of loss deep in his bones, deep in his chest and he can taste salt in the corner of his mouth and blood in the back of his throat.

He knows he is supposed to express this, somehow. He has to, somehow. He can't push it down, can't lock it away, can't rein it in. His defenses are failing him.

He digs his fingers into his neck, flays off his face and scrubs at the film of grief that tightens the skin beneath. Daniel is still warm when he leans in to gently press his forehead to his cheek, eyes squeezed so tightly shut he sees yellow sparks. Something knots tightly in his chest, drives in a splinter and he feels himself convulse and shudder; it hurts, it hurts and he is shatteringly, profoundly aware that there will never be enough vengeance in the world to kill it away.

The hand on the back of his neck surprises him. Laurel is touching him, and when he looks up she reads something in his face that makes her expression crumple until she's saying, "oh god, oh god," in open-mouthed sobs.

It's too raw to watch, too difficult, so he turns his eyes back down to Daniel, laid on a cold marble slab. He had imagined many deaths for himself, but never any for Nite Owl—not beyond quitting ignominiously to live a comfortable, meandering life. It shouldn't be like this, never should have been like this, he wasn't the one who was supposed to end here, it's all wrong, _no, no_—

He unclips the goggles, pushes back the cowl so he can take a final look at his partner's face. _Daniel, Daniel, no_—

A reflection shifts on the icy floor, a bruise of dark yellow and violet. Veidt, hovering over them like a vulture. He seems about to speak, but Rorschach is upon him before he can utter a silver-tongued word, barreling him backward to crash into the raving wall of televisions, and only when they fall silent and the tinkling glass falls silent and Veidt's breathing falls silent does he realize he is screaming.

–

"One more body," he tells Manhattan, Antarctic wind hooking the words with cold fingers and flinging them into the scrim of falling snow, featureless and white. A blank canvas, and he has nothing to write with but his own blood. "What's one more body?"

His mask is wrapped around one hand (and that long-cauterized wound has split open, it stings viciously as everything rushes to fill the vacuum—it was always a mask; he was always Kovacs. Soon he will be nobody.) and Daniel's goggles sit heavily in the other, lenses freezing against his palm, _memento mori_.

Manhattan raises his hand. Hesitates. Snowflakes hang impossibly.

He throws more words, hears them tumble into existence and then cease to be. Fleeting and ineloquent, serving only to hasten his own end. Do it, do it.

Manhattan is easily persuaded. He tightens his fist around a nova of blue light. For a fraction of a moment Rorschach sees deep summer skies suspended endlessly over concrete rooftops; a burning afterimage of a bold figure and gentle eyes; hears an easy laugh.

Before he can say 'thank you', there is nothing but howling in his ears, and white, and oblivion.

–

There is red light burning the inside of his head, crisping his languid, nonsensical thoughts with its hot glow. All he can think is, _wrong, should be blue_, and he bats that thought around aimlessly for a while, trying it at different angles. His eyes are gummed closed, lashes sticky and crusted, and it takes more effort than is right to open them. It is several more long, disorienting minutes until his brain can resolve what he is seeing; the sun setting, ferocious and bloated on a cityscape horizon, caught between colossal shadows that might be tombstones as much as they might be skyscrapers.

It sears his retinas, so he closes his eyes again, just for a moment.

There is something sticky beneath his fingers and in the creases of his palms. He thinks it might be blood. It seems likely to him, though he cannot say why. He watches the sky while he tries to make sense of himself, of the garbage bag under his leg, and of why the warm, gritty asphalt feels so wrong.

The shadows stretch and deepen, and the geometric slices of sky overhead transition from chemical orange to a streetlit indigo, spread under a bank of dirty clouds.

(There are no stars left.)

There is the itch of healing skin on his forehead and around his left eye, and it triggers some recollection that he can't quite pin down. It slides like rain down a window, almost taking shape before parting and trickling away as he tries to grasp at it, pooling in some dark recess that he can only see when he doesn't look directly at it.

It eventually occurs to him that he is sprawled in a stinking alleyway in the dark, and that is probably not normal behavior. He should get up.

His joints ache and creak abominably, limbs stiff and sluggish to respond. _The cold makes it worse,_ a stray thought informs him, but he ignores it because it doesn't make sense; it's warm here. He hauls himself to unsteady feet, one hand braced on greasy brickwork that is scribed with a dull patina of graffiti: _pale horse; krystalnacht; _

(falling glass, none of the fragments as cruelly sharpened as the shard burrowing into his chest)

_who watches the_—

It's familiar. It's New York. There's the shriek and rumble of a passing train, ensconced deep in the city's belly – and here's some subconscious mechanism, a cued recall that tells him he's on Eighth Avenue, near Penn Plaza. Near Madison Square—

It all comes back; rolling over him and pushing down on him as though he's a mile under water, pressure enough to crush him entirely. It fells him like a blow to the head, presses him to his hands and knees, bows his shoulders and makes him shudder and retch and moan.

—_millions, millions_—

And yet the train is still rumbling; there are no screams, no grotesque alien limbs. The asphalt under his palms does not bleed.

A bad dream. Hallucination? Desperation; he is driven mad. He is dead, has faced his judgment and this is his purgatory: tasked to scour the city clean for an eternity.

A car horn blares, bending with a Doppler shift as it passes the mouth of the alley.

Too visceral to be a figment of his imagination. A sham?

A hoax. It must have been a hoax. The writer, artist, musician and enough money to stage a production, to play his sick fantasy out in front of them all. But to what end?

Acrid bile stings the inside of his nose, sits in the back of his throat, coats his mouth with vile flavor. He spits. His hands flex against the sidewalk and he pushes himself upright.

To what end?

Ozymandias must have been insane. Mind turned, a result of his excesses, his sense drowned in decadence and indulgences. Only explanation. Only thing that makes a modicum of sense, but that doesn't say much. A warped performance by someone with too much wealth and too much power, and it had ended—

It had ended.

Daniel had ended—

_Daniel, Daniel, no..._

—for nothing. It had all been for nothing; the city lives but his partner is dead, his friend, his only—

And that glass splinter has barbs, it's rending his insides, but the pain is numbed under the cold rush of fury; it raises the hairs on his arms and grinds his teeth together. Veidt's neck under his hands was merely a prelude. Daniel will not go unavenged.

He hates this city. He hates this city, and he will choke the life from her fetid underbelly, bring down every scabrous parasite that clings to her oilslick skin. Cut through to her very heart, and chase out the vermin that have hollowed it and left it an echoing void. He will be an instrument of justice; a hundred times more furious than anything they have previously known, because—

—because—

His mask is sticky under his fingers, and it tastes of salt and copper when he draws it over his face.

—because, what else can he do?

There will never be enough vengeance, but it's all he can do. It's all he can do.

–

He can't find his hat. It upsets him, and the intensity of the emotion is alarming. It's just a hat.

–

He can't find his journal either.

It's his first priority; to take it back and look over his notes, refresh his muddled mind with the events that led up to this nightmare. It is doubly pragmatic; he would not want the evidence he had gathered on Veidt publicly known, if the world's smartest man is going to turn up missing and eventually dead. He is already thought of as paranoid and violent, he does not need to add 'delusional lunatic' to their list of grievances. Nor does he care to incriminate himself with evidence written in his own hand, enough to pin another murder on him.

(Guilty, though. Guilty.)

His stride falters as he recalls with a jolt: they know who he is, know Kovacs' face, and he is a wanted man. He instinctively moves further into deep shadows. Daytime existence is going to be challenging. He will not be able to move freely; he is no longer invisible, no longer one of the disenfranchised, designed to go unnoticed and ignored.

Difficult. But then, his life was never easy.

He draws up in front of the _New Frontiersman_ office. The shutters are down, so he slips around the building and attempts to pick the lock on the side door. Impatient after a minute or two of bouncing the pins, the door swings open with some gentle encouragement from his left foot instead, rattling noisily as it rebounds off the interior wall.

It's pitch black inside; he digs a flashlight out of his trench pocket, flicks it on. Smacks it with the heel of his hand until it works, barely. It's a piece of cheaply-manufactured garbage. He thinks wistfully of his good flashlight, languishing in a box somewhere in Sing Sing.

He trails the feeble beam around the office, searching for the in-tray. He locates it under a drift of paper, scatters the loose leaf over the floor as he scrabbles through manila envelopes and parcels. Not there.

The shoddy filing cabinet lock is no match for his rake pick, but again he comes up empty-handed.

He systematically ransacks every drawer, box and cabinet in the office.

"Hrm," he says to himself, and with a grudging sigh, rifles through the crank file. He feels slightly vindicated—but mostly frustrated—when he doesn't find his journal there, either.

He sweeps his flashlight around the room one more time. His eye is caught by a series of framed spreads on the wall. Some of them are of costumed heroes. He steps closer to inspect the article; it's familiar, from an edition published some months before the Keene Act was passed. There is an editorial on Nite Owl, on Doctor Manhattan and Ms Juspeczyk. The Comedian, and Ozymandias.

The page devoted to Rorschach is conspicuous in its absence.

He grunts, filing that curiosity away to think about later. For now, he has more pressing concerns.

Finding someplace to sleep, for a start. He can feel himself beginning to flag; his traitor body is groaning under the strain of the past few days and his mind is wandering, mulling over inconsequential things (protecting himself, unconsciously). His downtime in the alleyway was evidently not a restful one. It's exasperating, but he needs to recuperate his strength.

His apartment is out of the question. It is no doubt already rented to a new occupant, probably some glory-seeker desperate to tread the same rotting boards as Rorschach had, strain their ears at the walls in the vain hope that they will speak his secrets. They will be disappointed. He only ever talked in his sleep, and he knows whatever surfaced from the sludge at the back of his mind can only seed nightmares.

He idly wonders whether Shairp doubled the rent in the aftermath of his arrest, or maybe tripled it. Seems obvious that she would. Once a whore, always a whore.

His bolthole by the docks is occupied – cleaned up and used as the offices of a freight company. He mustn't have checked it for some weeks for it to have happened without his notice; the slip dismays him. Dangerous to have nowhere to go to ground, dangerous to not be certain about his options.

He hunkers down in a grimy doorway, padlock leaking rust down the peeling paintwork, shabby and disused. As good a place as any. He tucks his mask into his pocket, pulls up the collar of his trench. He feels vulnerable without his hat to protect him from the chill night air, without something to hide his eyes in shadow.

–

Sunrise comes inexplicably early, watery yellow light exposing his meager cover for what it is. The docks are busy and working, loud with the clamor of ratcheting chain and grinding metal, and shouting and swearing. The heavy stench of the Hudson seeps up around him. He wrinkles his nose.

He scrunches the rest of his face up as he rubs at the knotted muscles in his neck and shoulders (as he is disgusted by the grime that rolls under his fingertips and the unwashed stiffness of his scarf). He opens his eyes when a shadow falls across him, extinguishes the soft red of the morning light on the inside of his eyelids and sends his stomach into an uncontrollable lurch.

A longshoreman looms over him, weather-beaten face hard-set and scowling, hardhat dangling beneath his folded arms. "This is private property," he says. He has a thick accent, Polish perhaps. An illegal immigrant taking yet another honest American job. "Get the fuck out of here, you bum."

Rorschach tightens his jaw as he gets to his feet, draws himself up and squares his shoulders. Waits for the man's expression to break as recognition sets in. Nothing, not even a flicker. No indication that the longshoreman realizes who he is talking to. Rorschach knows his mugshot was plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the city; is it likely that this man is oblivious?

"Do you know who I am?" Rorschach rasps, voice cracked and uneven from sleep. He hates how imperious the question sounds, but the response will be telling.

The stevedore leans in; close enough that Rorschach can smell his breath, heavy with tobacco. Close enough to make him want to bare his teeth and growl. His hands ball into fists. If he is touched, he will not be held responsible.

"Apologies, your majesty," the man drawls, goading. "I did not recognize you without your jeweled crown." He grabs for Rorschach's scruff. "Get the fuck out."

The hardhat rattles noisily onto the cement, and Rorschach twitches as hot blood spatters his cheek. The longshoreman reels back, clasping his nose and grunting. The look on his face is gratifying, but Rorschach is not one to gloat.

He loses himself between the towering shipping containers, moving at pace away from sounds of outraged shouting. The docks were never their territory, though their leads occasionally brought Nite Owl and himself to the darkened warehouses and rotting piers. Often enough that the memories dive at him like spiteful ghosts, clinging to him in tattered shreds as he escapes back into the city.

–

He keeps to the alleyways and side streets, collar up and head down, inconspicuous. He has no destination, no overarching goal for the daytime beyond an urge to keep moving. His brain is whirring and his feet move restlessly, carrying him over the sidewalk as though they are trying to outrun his frenetic thoughts, eating up the miles. There is something very wrong, something huge and impossible, and he can almost put his finger on it, almost—

He's hot. It's warm. He smells—it's not the alleyway or the river, it's _him—_and the temperature is making the bloodstain on his trench swelter, is disturbing the ingrained filth. The fetid odor is rolling off him in ripe waves, making him shudder and—

He stops abruptly and tilts his face skywards. He's not certain of the time, but it feels like nine-thirty at the latest, and it's fully light and _warm_, like spring, like late April. No icy crystals chasing his breath, no bite of winter air. No smashed pumpkins on the neighborhood stoops, soft flesh stringy and decomposing.

He exhales loudly, soft vowel sounds marking his sudden realization.

(So obvious; he's slipping, badly.)

He turns on his heel and breaks into a jog, back towards a main street. He knows where he is. What he needs to know is _when_ he is. His hands shake. _Please_, he thinks, barely daring to hope that he could be this lucky, that he would be deserving of—

He fumbles a quarter from the depths of his trench pocket, feeds it into a newspaper box. _Please, please._

The date is Thursday, April 19th, 1979, and below that, there is the headline, irrefutable and undeniable in bold print, in black and white and buckling under his fingers, the headline announcing the retirement of the masked hero, Ozymandias.

—.—


	2. Chapter 2

The paper falls to the ground, pages spreading haphazardly, skittering over the sidewalk as a light wind catches them and tugs them into the gutter. Rorschach steadies himself against the newspaper box; he takes a deep breath, and another.

Eventually his surroundings stop blurring and shifting out of focus, and he can crouch to collect up the drifting pages before they become so much urban tumbleweed. He folds the paper under his arm, tight to his side, secreting it as though it is something illicit to be hidden from casual observation.

The headline is still the same the second time he reads it, the newsprint dappled under green shadow and midday sun. He perches on a section of the wrought-iron fence that laces through Washington Square Park and lines the pathways that meander around the fountain and the arch. There are many dead beneath his feet here, the nameless and indigent, centuries gone. He finds it morbidly appropriate, for reasons he can't quite articulate.

He skims the article quickly at first. Looking at Veidt's face makes something squirm and crawl beneath his skin, so he folds the paper lengthwise, splitting his smug expression, and tries again. His eyes are immediately drawn to a familiar name two-thirds of the way down the column, but he forces himself not to skip ahead, to read slowly and thoroughly (it helps to steady his hands and calm his stilted breathing).

The journalism is typical liberal propaganda, full of whitewashed half-truths glorying in Veidt's celebrity; garbage written to appeal to the lowest common denominator. He is slightly depressed to have spent money on it—if he had been thinking more clearly, he could easily have found a paper abandoned on a subway platform or tucked between the slats of a park bench. He furrows his brow, digs around in his trench coat pocket for a pen. This will take some deconstruction.

He only has his own knee to rest on, and the ballpoint rips through the soft, cheap paper, even folded over. He makes a displeased noise and gathers himself up, moving toward the chess tables. They are mostly unoccupied, though soon it will be busy; he glances at his wrist, then remembers that his watch is keeping good company with his flashlight. He looks up at the sun instead. Must be almost lunchtime, and then this place will be teeming with corporate drones and NYU students, all desperately trying to break up the tedium of their day. Best be gone before then.

Lunch. His stomach growls demandingly as he tries to remember the last time he ate. Matters little; he brought everything up in the alleyway. The smell still clings to the cuffs of his trench coat, a sour high note over the reek of sweat and old blood and heavy smoke.

He frowns at himself, at the tangents his mind seems determined to take. He pushes the pointless distractions aside, returns his attention to the newspaper, pen hovering.

Most of what Veidt has to say is trite and fatuous; Rorschach grudgingly notes that much of his eloquence has been dulled by the poor writing. There's a paragraph he circles, nonetheless. One that makes reference to 'pursuing a personal project,' and an 'ambitious, long-term plan'.

Of course, it could be yet another Veidt Enterprises venture. More consumer fodder like the cologne or the action figures. On the other hand, he could be cracking, even now, and there is no telling how many he had murdered—will murder—n order to facilitate his black fantasy, his twisted experiment. His—

His hoax?

No. Wait—

_No_.

This is not the New York he left behind for Antarctica, days ago. This is not the same New York that criminalized its heroes, drove Nite Owl into retirement and Rorschach into the shadows. This—

This is not his New York.

And he finally lets that knowledge impact him, full force. The illusion cracks and melts like breached ice, sucks him down into the dark, freezing waters beneath and leaves him gasping.

Somewhere else, along some tangled skein, there is a reality where unnatural flesh is putrefying in blood-washed streets, while a hero lies cold and lifeless at the edge of the world, beyond man and time. Where the entire city is a potter's field and monoliths to Veidt are built upon the mass grave of the millions he murdered.

His tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth, thick and dry. The pen clatters to the table, rolls in an arc and falls to the ground, forgotten.

He _did_ it.

He did it, and he will do it again, is going to do it again. He must be stopped, at any cost. Must be–

"Hey. Hey... you okay?"

Rorschach looks up. A man stands next to him, leaning over slightly, face pulled into an expression like concern. Cheap brown suit, muddied shoes, tie unclipped and dangling. Glasses. Rorschach's throat tightens, but the man is a stranger.

"Uh, sorry," he's saying, faltering as he gives Rorschach the once over.

Rorschach knows how he must look; dark-eyed and drawn, stinking. Hunched over disorganized sheets of newspaper and trembling as though the world is ending all around him. Yet, he still waits for that spark of recognition and the fear that should follow. What he gets is the tangible discomfort of someone who has accidentally made eye contact with a vagrant.

"Here," the man says, fumbling a couple of dollar bills onto the table. Predictable, self-serving response of the wealthy, designed to alleviate their personal guilt. So very magnanimous. "Just don't spend it on..."

Rorschach is too busy grimacing indignantly at the money to care that he trails off, backs up and leaves, not quite hastily enough to be impolite.

As Kovacs, he had depended on the alms of anonymous strangers for a long time, regardless of their motives, but never would one have dared to press charity into Rorschach's hands—and certainly not accompanied with such condescension.

_Of course,_ he thinks, dipping his hand into his pocket, fingertips skimming the wadded latex. _'79 cares nothing for Kovacs._

_Rorschach is still the only face they know._

–

He strikes out south. The heady aroma of street food torments his hollow stomach and the crumpled bills are burning a hole in his pocket (he wants rid of their stigma). However, he has more important business to attend to before he will deal with his body's clamoring demands. He crosses the street, approaches a newsstand. News vendors are informed. They see every front page. It will be a simple, effective test.

The vendor does not flinch or cower. Does not call for help or for the police, or in fact exhibit any suspicion beyond what Rorschach expects—and with breaking clarity, he finds that he _does_ expect a particular reaction. He is more self-aware than he can ever remember being, and if he can barely stand himself, why should anyone else?

Regardless, his suspicions are confirmed. Kovacs is anonymous, still. His disguise is intact.

He indulges himself with an edition of the _New Frontiersman_ (although he's certain he must already own it, somewhere, somewhen) and folds it around the paper he bought earlier.

–

He sates his hunger with a warm bag of honey-roasted peanuts from a street cart. The owner is Chilean or Argentine, but at least the food is identifiable, unlike the foul middle-eastern fare being peddled nearby. He wolfs the first couple of handfuls ravenously, but takes his time after that, sucking the sugary crust from each nut in turn then crunching it between his back teeth. (There are no Sweet Chariot cubes in the pockets of this trench coat).

He wanders the Lower East Side throughout the afternoon and into the evening, scouting out derelict tenement blocks for a likely bolthole. While necessity, exhaustion or an injury has occasionally found him hunched in a doorway or on a park bench or squeezed between dumpsters for the night, he's never truly been homeless. He dislikes losing that small measure of security; a place to keep evidence, scavenged medical supplies, scant morsels of food. Never anywhere he would call home, but somewhere he can sleep well enough.

(Somewhere with clean sheets, and the smell of engine oil and jet exhaust. Somewhere he can sleep securely, and wake to find a warm mug of coffee tucked next to the cot leg.

No. He can't go there, not yet.

Not until—)

–

The newspapers make him ungainly, wedged in the inside pocket of his trench where his journal used to sit, but he manages to haul himself up a drainpipe and onto the fire escape of a particularly dilapidated tenement. He elbows in the boarded-up window with a little more force than it strictly needed.

A shake of his flashlight, and the dingy room is revealed to be mostly abandoned. Scattered drug paraphernalia and a heap of unlaundered clothes on a bare mattress are the only signs of occupancy. He tries the light switch. No power; most likely squatters, then.

"—seriously man, I _heard_ something, I ain't fucking having a bad trip, shut the fuck up—"

Muffled voices nearby. Rorschach clicks off the flashlight, slips his mask from its pocket. The sun has almost set, distended and sweltering on the horizon, streaking red across the sky and dousing everything in sanguine hues. The fabric of his mask is like bright arterial blood, clotting as he draws it over his face.

He steps behind the door as it opens.

"Aw, what the hell? Someone busted in the window!" A couple of skinny punks with lank hair and twitchy limbs. Rorschach knows the kind: strung-out bottom feeders, dangerous only in large numbers. Easily spooked.

"I fucking _told_ you man, some motherfucker goin' for our stash. Is it...?"

One of them crouches, lifts a corner of the mattress. "Nah, ain't been touched, man. What—"

Rorschach clears his throat.

The pair spin around. One of them stares gape-mouthed; the other has enough time to shriek, "what the fuck is _that!_" before Rorschach slams his fist into his stomach.

"Get out of here," he rasps, shoving the wheezing kid into his friend, driving them both out of the door and into the hallway beyond. They stumble backwards, eyes dilated and cavernous and drenched in dusk light.

"Where's his _face_, man," one of them says with horrified reverence, clinging to his groaning, hiccuping friend with hands that float like pale ghosts. "Where's his _face_!"

Rorschach takes a step towards them, and whatever paralyzing fear or vestige of courage was holding them there disintegrates. They hurtle out of the apartment in a frenzied panic, raving about vengeful phantoms; zombies; haunted places. Rorschach wrinkles his nose at the sharp stench of warm urine left in their wake. They might come back when they are sober again, but he doubts it.

For now, adrenaline is flushing through him in a sweet pulse, and night has fallen. The city calls to him, howling like a cat in heat; sordid and familiar.

–

He falls into his old patrol routes like a bad habit. It's reassuring to tread the same littered asphalt and find the same dealers and whores plying their trade, as though the streets belong to them. As though smearing the neighborhood with enough filth will eventually make it theirs, by virtue of it being undesirable to anyone else.

(Reassuring that he still has a purpose.)

Orchard Street is easy pickings. He interrupts a pair of furtive creatures tucked into a side street, skulking against a shuttered dime store window. Money and small packets discreetly change hands, lit dimly by a sphere of dirty sodium that mires their faces.

Rorschach drags them out into the saturated light of the street. It reveals their expressions with the suddenness of a shock cut; mouths widened grotesquely in terror, neon flickering over them and etching fear into their faces, twisting them like any number of horror film victims. Their surprise seems disproportionate, as though they'd never seen him before.

They loll unconscious as he checks their pockets and then lashes them to a spark hydrant, stretching their sleeves and knotting them together when he can't find any rope about his person. He stands over them for a long moment, fold of cash in one hand, packets of white powder in the other.

The money is unpleasant to hold; tattered and greasy and tainted with vice, and he should destroy it or turn it in to the precinct house along with the drugs. Take it out of circulation.

He thinks of his bolthole. It's not secure, with its broken window and easily jimmied lock, but that is not his main concern. His old apartment was not secure either (and he suspects Shairp regularly snooped), but nobody knew the secret places: which floorboard could be pried up; where best to get at the hollow space behind the drywall. But this new place, it was favored by squatters and junkies, and they always know the secret places. No, he cannot keep any measure of security there. Only good for when downtime is a necessity, nothing more.

The money rest heavily in his palm, heavier than the drugs.

He looks down at the two punks, slumped in the gutter where they belong. Nudges one with the toe of his boot; no response. He makes a noise in the back of his throat. Justice has been dispensed to his satisfaction, he decides. Anything beyond physical punishment has not been part of his MO for many years. He is uncertain why he is being so indecisive about this.

He empties the packets of powder into a storm drain, and tucks the cash into his pocket. He can use the dirty money to sustain himself (can maintain his dignity, rather than scrabble for loose change, sign resting uncomfortably on his shoulder), to better destroy the criminals who taint it. Fitting. Ironic, even. He can find a respectable landlord, and introduce it back into the economy through legal means. A purifying process. He can justify that.

New situation, new rules. He can justify that.

He can.

–

It's only two hours later, and he is braced against an anonymous alley wall, breathing hard, head swimming. The adrenaline in his system has become something malignant and poisonous and he cannot stop shaking. The thought that he has already exhausted his reserves of energy makes him furious; that he cannot push himself beyond that failing makes him shake even harder. Pathetic stinking husk of a body is disintegrating, time and privation (being ripped through dimensions) finally starting to take their toll.

He steps over the prone body of a would-be rapist and makes his way back to his hideout, leaving the city to its own grim devices.

–

Like a bitter joke, he can't sleep.

He sits on the sill instead, nearby streetlight spilling its chemical light across the newspaper in his hands. He finished reading the article a little while ago, and is battling with a slew of unpleasant responses; his hands crumple the edge of the pages, and he feels sick to his stomach. _Angry_, he tells himself as his eyes stray once more to the offending sentence. Just a small aside, throwaway words.

—_states that his partner, the hero known as Nite Owl, will not be retiring._

_Angry_, he thinks again, trying to swallow around the knot in his throat. Years and years ago, a part of him had been desperate to read something akin to those words. He'd stamped it down and ignored it because that's what he does, but here is a reminder, vomited in front of him in cheap newsprint, mocking and cruel. He should be _angry_.

"Ozymandias?" he says to the empty room. "Daniel? _Veidt?_"

He pitches the paper out of the window in disgust and watches it plummet to the sidewalk below. Errant sheets shake loose and drift slowly in its wake.

He unfolds the _New Frontiersman_. The familiar rhetoric is a relief after the vacuous fluff of the tabloid, but the content is largely similar. Veidt is decidedly vague even through Godfrey's more perceptive eye; there's scathing criticism of his retirement, a sentiment of un-Americanism that Rorschach is glad to agree with. Derision of his new focus on business and profit. Another mention of Nite Owl, his erstwhile partner.

He briefly wonders if this is Manhattan's idea of a joke. Rorschach doesn't think much of his sense of humor.

Thinking, he presses his tongue into the gap where a tooth used to sit. Of course, it does make sense. Daniel was always companionable, eager to work as part of a team. He would seek another partner, in the absence of Rorschach. And an absence of Rorschach would be key to Manhattan's reason for bringing him _here_ in particular.

Why he did that instead of reducing him to his constituent particles as he had quite clearly asked, well. That is something currently beyond his understanding.

As it is, there is no indication that Rorschach exists here. Ever existed here, before now.

He feels out of time.

(He thinks of men with cruel fists and of being touched until he is sick; of overripe fruit and cigarettes. He thinks of how dog's blood feels, oozing over his hands; hot and stinking like its breath had been.

Remembers pepper burning in his nose, bare skin of his cheek pressed against the cracked sidewalk.

He thinks of the time he was almost gutted, sliced navel to sternum, and how slippery hands had held him together, panicked voice telling him _it's okay, just hang on, I can fix this._

He thinks of all the ways it could have ended.

_Stay with me, buddy._

He hopes Walter's death was merciful.)

–

Nightmares come, as they always do.

He stares into iced-over glass, shreds the pale skin from his face to reveal a grinning death's head. That sloughs away in turn, though he doesn't see what's underneath. His vision is suddenly obscured, and he has to claw himself out of a miasma of scarlet droplets that thicken the air, that cling to him and contract like a womb.

He's wading knee-deep into cold cold hot meat, putrid, rotting. There's slick fluid pooling under his tongue and it tastes of iron, it is sometimes viscous like raw egg and sometimes it is leaden, oily like smoke; it always renders him mute.

Wood creaks, shrill and disturbing. Ice blue skies expand to crush him and he cannot make a sound.

–

Dawn finds him curled on the bare floorboards, head pillowed on his trench, arm numb where he has slept on it. His hip aches against the unforgiving wood, and there's firm heat between his thighs, resolutely ignored. He allows himself a low groan as he rises to his feet. It's one more concession that he is human; the rate and ease with which these admissions come is troubling.

The sagging mattress looks even more suspect by daylight, and Rorschach is glad he chose to not sleep on it. Living in his own filth is one thing; living in someone else's is a different matter entirely. He tips it up against the wall so he doesn't have to look at the stains, to stop his mind whirring and analyzing and feeding back in lurid detail exactly how they got there.

His skin crawls and shudders under layers of stiff fabric as he pulls on his trench. He doesn't feel any better about things than he did yesterday, but he has something he needs to do.

–

Rorschach has spent many long hours in the Department of Records, knows how to find what he's looking for quickly and efficiently. Daniel never had much patience for this, he recalls, thumbing through the drawer of index cards marked _Kn–Kz_: _Koenen, Koubek, Kovacs._ He'd preferred his own database, with its unfathomable command lines and streams of green data, noisy dot matrix printouts and burnt-dust smell. _Kovacs, S.; Kovacs, T.G.; Kovacs, W._

More efficient, he'd always insist, grinning foolishly. Rorschach had come up with the goods first almost every time._ Kovacs, W.J._

There's the rapid click-click of heeled shoes on the polished floor, slowing gradually and halting nearby; he looks up. A clerk stands, frowning, nose wrinkled as she glances around. She notices him with a start and smooths her face out, distaste still pulling at the corners of her mouth. Her skirt is an inappropriate length.

"Sir," she says, as he fixes her with a blank look. "We close at one p.m. today."

The clock on the wall reads 12:35. "Will be done by then," he says gruffly. She nods, and strides away, sharp retort of her footfalls echoing through the archives. He rubs the flat of his hand against his suit jacket as though he can press the smell out of it, lips thinned and twisted into an unhappy shape.

After a moment he manages to shake himself out of this latest bout of painful cognizance; no time for that now, or ever. He has no tolerance for self-pity, even his own. The index cards show him where to find the relevant microfiche. He starts with the vital records.

KOVACS, Sylvia. Née GLICK.

BORN: 1919, January 17th.  
DATE OF DEATH: 1956, August 14th (age 37).  
PRINCIPLE CAUSE OF DEATH AND RELATED CAUSES:  
Corrosive injury of the stomach.  
Severe oesophageal damage.  
Severe hypernatremia.  
Seizure.  
SYMPTOMATIC OF forced ingestion of sodium hydroxide cleaning solution ("Drano").

HOMICIDE.

"Good," Rorschach mutters, and even after all this time he cannot find a more fitting sentiment. He tries to remember why he wanted to look at her death certificate in the first place. Making sure, perhaps.

The glossy film slides beneath his fingers, leaves a blank, off-white square in its wake. He nudges the next sheet into place and scrolls through to the correct index number. He finds he is bracing himself with clenched teeth and takes a deep breath, adjusts the dial to bring the text into focus.

KOVACS, Wanda Josephine.

He frowns, scrolls back an entry; then forward one. Double-checks the card, then focuses his attention back on the reader.

BORN: 1940, March 21st.  
DATE OF DEATH: 1964, April 26th (age 24).  
PRINCIPLE CAUSE OF DEA—

Something lurches in his gut, and he stands abruptly. His chair teeters over, clattering to the floor and dislodging his trench from where it was slung over the back.

He takes a few paces away from the reader, needing to breathe suddenly, fingers pulling at the scarf at his neck. A shiver works its way through him from the base of his spine to the back of his neck, raising the hair there; like someone's walking over his grave.

That's a little too apt. He wants to scrape the idea out of his brain.

He rights the chair, just stands there with his hand clenched around the top, white-knuckled. The viewer has become some kind of malevolent seer, offering a glimpse of his ultimate fate, and he regards it with the appropriate level of dread.

He recognizes his mortality, has imagined many deaths for himself. He has never wanted to know exactly how it will end, because he knows life is often cruelly poetic in its irony and he does not want to carry the subtle influence of such knowledge—even as distorted as it would be through the cracked lens of this new world.

He has what he came here for: confirmation that he (_she_) is... that he will not encounter his... counterpart.

The clock ticks around to 12:54.

He gathers up the microfiche sheets, conscientiously returns them to their rightful places, shrugs on his trench and leaves.

It's not important, he tells himself as he heads to the library, weaving through stationary traffic and harried, jostling pedestrians. Not important who she might have been, who she could have been. She is not, was not him. Was never going to be him, could never... could _never_...

_Female_, he thinks, with a fresh surge of disbelief, and then _whore_, so inextricably associated, sharp and stinging like a slap across his face. Because what kind of chance, living like that. What kind of chance would she have had, living with that.

Those who are strong enough, struggle.

A pained noise escapes his throat before he can choke it down. The crowd opens up around him for a beat, faceless citizens skirting him with hive-mind uniformity, unconsciously aware of the anomaly in their midst.

Then the crowd surges and he is swallowed again, pulled along like flotsam caught in a riptide.

–

After the fourth article, Rorschach has to admit to himself that he is wallowing, and stops working his way through the newspaper archive. There are stories on all their big busts: Big Figure, Underboss, Twilight Lady (put away the first time she's caught, he notes with frustration) all credited to the Ozymandias–Nite Owl team.

He wonders if he is allowed to feel betrayed by someone who has never met him.

He leaves the library in much the same state he left the Municipal Archive, though not without having garnered some more important information. Keene never ran for senator, ergo there is no Keene Act. For some years there has been a tenuous alliance between NYPD and a loose association of vigilantes: the Crimebusters.

–

Later, he finds a fedora in a thrift store. It's the wrong shade of brown and the felt is too clean, lacking the patina of blood and city residue, but in that moment he's just absurdly pleased to find the hat band is purple.

–

It's the next day, night sweats and ugly dreams survived with the fortitude of long practice. The city is abuzz with talk of Ozymandias' retirement. Veidt's face dominates the television banks as Rorschach treads the streets; walls of garish color in storefront displays. Sometimes there are dozens of him, sometimes one giant talking head. Rorschach wants to gather a handful of rocks and smash them all, one by one.

He swipes a paper from an overflowing trash can. Veidt, Veidt, Veidt, facetious prattle. He scans the articles for a mention of Nite Owl—and finds himself, instead.

A subhead reads _New Mask?_, followed by a few column inches of witness reports, recounting some of his recent activities. Some conjecture over whether more masks will appear from under Ozymandias' glittering shadow.

The Inkblot, they call him. He lets his mouth curl in a brief smirk.

They won't call him that for long.

—.—


	3. Chapter 3

A low-pitched keening noise cuts into Rorschach's skull, gradually growing in pitch and intensity as his grip tightens. He can feel the resistance of bone under his fingers; the subtle creak that tells him he's pressing too hard, any more and the punk's face will break. He imagines it caving in like a rotten watermelon—his fingers sinking in and splattering the pulpy insides all over the brickwork—but in reality it's never that easy, nor that dramatic.

Despite what some people believe, he is not a sadist. Beyond a primal, lizard-brained satisfaction, he does not take any particular pleasure in brutality. It's simply the most practical and effective course of action most of the time. It sends an emphatic message, and the reputation he garners as a consequence is useful.

Was useful. He has been rebuilding it on a nightly basis, piecemeal; one mugger, dealer, pimp at a time. For each one he takes down, five more learn his name. It's dirty work, but he has to break a few eggs

(to save _billions_)

to make an omelet.

He shudders, eases up. The keen becomes a gurgle.

"Fucking mask," the kid gasps, and then, "please," as terror finally crests behind the stoned glass-sheen of his eyes. The back of his head is pressed into the alley wall, face and hair smeared with paint where Rorschach rolled him into his own graffiti. The aerosol can rattles around their feet where it was dropped; yellow, fluorescent.

Rorschach draws his arm back, feels the tension winding deep into his muscles and releases it with a snap of his fist. He tries not to feel gratified as the kid's skull rebounds against the brickwork. Tries not to feel repelled at the crunch of cartilage. Tries to not feel anything at all, but that's harder than he remembers it being.

The punk folds to the blacktop, makes a wet, bubbling sound. Rorschach stares down at him, at the blood dribbling from his nose and between cupped fingers, then at the interrupted slogan thrown across the brickwork. _Who watches—_

He was cocky, overconfident. Far too sure of himself, for a feckless excuse of a criminal. Impudent. It only underscores the fact that Rorschach no longer has decades of notoriety working in his favor.

He shakes out his hand, massages each knuckle in turn; they're bruised and dark with blood. Not all of it belongs to other people. His nails are ragged and torn, finger joints swollen. They ache with it, somewhere deep down that popping and rubbing can't reach. He resolves to acquire some gloves, and slots this new task into his hierarchy of priorities.

Later on, he moves it closer to the top of his mental list when he climbs a broken fire escape and jagged metal bites into his palms.

–

The city howls tonight, spasming like an animal in its death-throes. From his vantage, Rorschach can watch the swarm and crawl of bodies as they scurry through the alleyways below. Human detritus proliferates readily in these squalid little corners; they are ripe abscesses, ready to burst and spread their poison into the city's veins.

Good metaphor. His hands move to his chest, pat at the void of his inside pocket. There's still empty space where his journal should sit. He reorders his priorities once again: new journal, then new gloves. He frowns at himself, annoyed that he is becoming overly concerned with such minutiae.

He tilts his head back and tucks up the mask to taste the air, exhaust and smoke and the burning grease of fast food. The sky is cloudless and chill, not so much that his breath ghosts but enough that it's healthy encouragement to keep moving.

He takes a half-dozen paces back, runs and launches himself forward; he feels the reflexive bunch and stretch of his body, the fraction of time where it reaches something like equilibrium and then the minute, instinctive adjustments before the jarring impact of his feet on the roof of the adjacent building.

He crouches for a moment then straightens up, adjusts his fedora. His knees complain, and there is a brief flare of pain in his ankle that quickly subsides back to an ignorable dull throb.

This would be a lot easier with his grapnel gun. He regrets the loss of it beyond the mild annoyance he feels over his missing flashlight and watch, and its absence is perhaps even more pronounced than that of his journal. As much as he never admitted it to Daniel, it was remarkably useful.

(It was a gift.)

He wonders if this Nite Owl will be willing to part with such a practical tool. He wonders if he has even built one, lacking a partner who often scales rooftops. He doesn't imagine that Ozymandias would deign to climb a drainpipe.

He immediately cuts off that line of thought before it can spiral out into something uncomfortable. He hasn't given the discovery of their... _partnership_ any consideration beyond anger and frustration; the implications are too brutal when it comes to his overarching goal here. He will deal with it when it becomes necessary.

He twists and lowers himself, catches a tentative foothold on the ledge below. It's a small leap onto yet another fire escape ladder, and from there, only seconds until his feet are back on alleyway asphalt. He hunches his shoulders as he stalks through spilled garbage, weaving between trashcans and dumpsters.

"Hey," says a voice from behind him. "You."

He turns slowly. There are a number of youths emerging from the shadows, slinking out of a doorway. Leather jackets and tattered shirts, hair pulled back like samurai, as though they know anything of honor. One is tapping the flat edge of a blade against his palm in a syncopated rhythm.

"Looking for a good time?" Their leader flashes a provocative leer, sharp like dog's teeth but the bravado is paper thin. His eyes flicker to the adjoining alley to the right, and he licks his lips.

This is a different species of criminal from the tagger. Still callow, but these punks have something to prove. They know enough of Rorschach that they want to take him down as a trophy kill. They know enough of him to realize that he is a threat. Stupid to try, but smart enough that they plan an escape even as they challenge him.

Good.

"Yes," he says, the word sparking like a knife against grindstone.

The punk circles, a gauche attempt to get the upper hand. Rorschach turns, keeps him pinned under his gaze, and it's obvious that his mask is aggravating the kid, keeps him from staring back. His contempt is palpable, and if Rorschach were a lesser man, he might feel inclined to goad.

As it is, he breathes and stares and lets adrenaline sharpen him. It feels like anticipation sinking into his muscles, a taut energy waiting to be unleashed, prickling static before a lightning strike. The kid keeps glancing to the alleyway. He won't last long.

"Fag."

He could be anywhere, any when, but some things never change.

Rorschach feints away from the amateur swipe of a blade and catches the kid with a left hook to the jaw. He makes a sharp, shocked gasp and staggers backwards, hand pressing to his face, stumbles until his shoulders hit the wall behind him. He gives himself a shake, spits, hefts the knife in his hand and if Rorschach doesn't think much of his combat skill, he can at least admire his persistence.

The kid lunges, and his face meets Rorschach's knee with a crunch. Perhaps he will learn to cut his losses in future.

Leader taken out, it usually goes one of two ways. It's satisfying when they turn tail and run. It's even more so when they don't, when instead they hurl themselves at him, driven to revenge by their stunted sense of loyalty.

This night, they are good to him.

Rorschach loses himself in the chaos, blood pounding with exertion as his body moves two steps ahead of cognizant thought, riding on pure instinct. Another punk goes reeling back, booted into the alleyway wall, and somewhere on his periphery there is the snap and flutter of leather.

He hesitates only a second, a series of moments where the rhythm of his violence is lost and becomes discordant, jarring, and then he forcibly flat-lines his thoughts. He drives his fist into an unprotected belly and then into a soft throat, spins, and he is face to face with Nite Owl; midnight for eyes and a hunter's smile.

The first time they met, Rorschach had merely been a man in a costume, and had recognized another man in a costume. After decades and ash, that is not what he sees now.

He catches a sharp breath on his tongue, chokes it into a snarl as he deflects a thick-soled boot aimed at his head. This is not how it went, the first time. His fedora flips into the gutter, but his more pressing concern is the fist striking for his ribs, and what is Nite Owl is doing, why doesn't he—

Rorschach parries, blocks each successive blow with the ease of long practice. They have sparred together a hundred times and Rorschach has watched him a hundred times more. He knows his partner's moves intimately, knows how to counter his cheap shots—block with the forearm, twist away so he can't cripple him with a hit to the groin—but Rorschach keeps on the defensive, intends to stay that way.

This Nite Owl is still youthful, unlined under the cowl. His body is trim and his technique is disciplined and technical, lacking the recklessness to his form that Rorschach realizes was his own influence. It's possible that he has the advantage here, could dart past Rorschach's guard, swoop in and pin him. It has happened before.

But the assault abruptly ceases, and Nite Owl steps back, panting lightly. Rorschach keeps his fists raised.

"Come on," Nite Owl says, and he sounds just the same, just like Daniel. If Rorschach makes a noise, it's because he's still keyed up from the fight.

"Come on," Nite Owl repeats, and this time he sounds more like a stranger. He flows back into a combat stance, sleek and dangerous. "Okay, you're good, kid—_really_ good—but you can't do this thing if you're squeamish." He gestures, a flick of his hand that's far too close to being a taunt. "Come on, give me your best shot."

Kid.

He thinks—

He doesn't know, and he's _hazing_ him, like he's—

He really doesn't know. He doesn't recognize him at all; there's no flicker of recollection behind the goggles, no affability rounding his words. He sounds brittle and forced in that way he does when he feels upset, or threatened.

If Rorschach makes a noise, it's because he's keyed. If he's shaking, it's because of the adrenaline. He doesn't try to speak.

Nite Owl tilts his head, tucks his chin down and Rorschach can picture the questioning rise of his eyebrows behind the goggles' mirrored glass. The familiarity of the gesture is unbearable.

Rorschach shrugs at the bodies littering the alleyway and writhing like worms. He trusts himself with an echoed word, sent rasping through the night air. "Squeamish?"

The sharp edge of Nite Owl's battle-grin falters and becomes unstrung, shaken out by something like inquisitiveness. Rorschach bends to scoop up his hat so he doesn't have to look at him, turns on his heel as he tugs the fedora into place. Too soon for this.

Nite Owl doesn't follow, nor does he call after him like Daniel might have done.

Rorschach knows what providence granted him this chance, and how ungrateful it is to resent it, but there is something cruel in all of this. He wonders if Manhattan will realize, will recall Rorschach's snow-numb wish and return to spare him, turn him to salt, scatter him to the winds.

He doubts it.

He looks back as he turns out of the alleyway; Nite Owl is watching him, arms folded and head cocked like he's puzzling out a lead, and for a moment it's 1964, it's the heart of summer and they're working a case. He's on reconnaissance, and they'll rendezvous later.

–

Later, it catches him unawares. He has to brace his back against a wall and press the heels of his hands against his eyes until he sees sparks.

–

He pushes his fingers through the slice in his trench, watches the canvas shear apart like a bloodless wound. His suit jacket is similarly damaged. A long score across the upper arm bisects the pinstripes and the satin lining is slick and cool beneath. It'd be easy to repair, if he had a needle and thread. He has stitched up his uniform more times than his own skin; it's something he always takes great care with, because unlike skin, cloth left alone does not heal itself.

The material is stiff, caked with grime and crud; unlike wounds, cloth can stand to remain unwashed. Flexing it sends wafts of odor into the room. It makes him snort and breathe through his mouth, nose wrinkled. It used to bother him, the damp smell of his apartment clinging to his clothes and hair, the rank odor of a hundred back-alleys, the tang of blood on his uniform. He doesn't know when he stopped noticing it.

He presses his lips into a pale line, folds the jacket and sets it to the side. There's enough cash in the trench's hidden pockets for a month's rent, maybe two if he's lucky. No self-respecting landlord would take on a tenant in his state, though. They would suspect him, and he will not abide any level of scrutiny. Too intrusive and too dangerous.

There are plenty of less savory landlords who will take him, no questions asked, concerned only with the money and not with the source. But scum attracts scum, and he will not find himself in another hellhole like that.

Daniel, he'd seen him with the missing buttons and grubby cuffs, and had offered to heat up his food. He can hear the pity in his voice now, and Rorschach is not certain that it's an embellishment of his memory.

–

There's an unmanned 24-hour Laundromat three blocks over. There is one closer, but its handful of patrons deterred him. He has rarely used these services as he strongly suspects they're owned by organized crime syndicates who are laundering more than just clothes, but the fact is, he no longer has a sink to scrub his uniform in.

(He makes a mental note to investigate at a later date.)

Sitting on the hard plastic bench, wrapped in his trench coat while his suit washes, he thinks it was a wise decision to seek out an empty establishment. He can see a distorted reflection of himself in the front of the dryer: pale, bony legs protruding from the bottom of his coat; hands tucked under his arms; face drawn tight. He looks like a pervert, and, irrationally, he feels like one.

Someone passes by on the street and it sets his heart shuddering in his throat. The cold coursing down his spine and prickling up his arms doesn't subside until long after the person walks on. He wills the dryer to finish its cycle so he can get dressed and get out.

After an eon, it does. He dresses hurriedly, fabric still warm as he pulls on socks and undershirt, buttons his shirt cuffs. It feels tighter, too fragile against his skin—too soft, as though it will tear like tissue paper—though it's better when he shrugs on the hard shell of his trench.

The knees of his pants are threadbare and faded, his shirt irrevocably grayed, but there's nothing to be done about that. No amount of detergent can fix the frayed edges of his scarf, either.

He checks each machine's coin return before he leaves. Habit.

–

He sits with his back propped against the wall, dozing while a pale dawn seeps into the room. His thoughts wind in twists and turns, coiling around the inside of his head and uprooting the wreckage of old memories that he doesn't want to dwell on. They're silent seething heat, a well-scarred part of the road.

At some point he stops thinking and starts dreaming.

He is lying on his back, somewhere. He can't tell where, because the world ceases to exist anywhere beyond the shoulder of the man who is bent over him. This seems normal; he is not worried. The man is a stranger, though Rorschach knows he doesn't like him. He's familiar in an untouchable way.

The man has a needle, and he is stitching Rorschach's mouth shut. It hurts in the abstract, a theoretical pain; the itching of a ghost limb and not the real, sweat-sharp sting of a wound being sutured. He is speaking in tongues as he sews, a glossolalia of Masonic symbolism that washes over Rorschach and leaves cryptic geometric imprints on the inside of his skull.

Rorschach's legs part. The man pushes them further, and further still. Too far, and Rorschach needs to bring them together, to draw himself closed, but he has the weight and strength of thistledown. He's tearing, straight up the middle, and the only thing that is holding him together in the end is the thread.

Wrong tenacity, he tries to say, tries to yell, because he is panicking now. He remembers this much: if the thread is stronger than the fabric, the fabric will rip before the thread breaks.

He wakes up sweltering and disgustingly hard, the midday sun glaring in his face.

–

The two-room apartment is barely furnished and austere in decor, but Rorschach has never been one to indulge in unnecessary luxury. The mattress looks clean, the window has curtains and the place doesn't smell of anything but pine disinfectant, and that is more than satisfactory.

The lock is cheap and would be easy to slip open with a knife or credit card, but there are ways to remedy that.

He tugs the window open and leans out, casing the side of the building to make sure there is an adequate route to street level or up onto the roof. Fire escape is in good order; alley below is narrow and looks as though it will be badly lit come night-time. He grunts in approval.

"It's not the nicest view," the landlady says. Ms. Green is in her early forties, reedy, neat and bland with a gray skirt suit and legal pad. She has been generally inoffensive so far, but Rorschach wishes she would stop fidgeting with her expensive pen and being habitually apologetic.

"Good enough," he says, closing the window over. He slides a hand into his pants pocket, touches the fold of bills tucked there.

"Okay, that's fine then." Her pen goes click-click. Rorschach once incapacitated two felons using only a pen. "So, get your details to me and I'll review your application, then we can go from there, mister...?"

"Kovacs," Rorschach says, and with the realization that this is in fact going be a tiresome exercise in bureaucracy that will eventually amount to nothing, asks her, "What details."

"Kovacs. That's an interesting name," she says, jotting on her notepad. "Current and past addresses with contact details for previous landlords. Your, ah, employer, and the length of your employment. Just the usual references." She frowns at his irredeemably scuffed shoes, at the tear in his suit jacket and then squints at his face. "It sounds European. Eastern European."

"I am American, Ms. Green," Rorschach says. He dislikes the passive accusation of her tone. "Believe in an honest day's work."

He doesn't care that this sentiment seems to take her aback. She plucks at her hair and straightens her blouse, her expression all flat lines. "Yes, of course. Let me show you out," she says.

–

Rorschach finds a walk-up in Queens. The landlord takes his money and doesn't ask for anything else.

His neighbor is a whore.

Rorschach clips shoulders with a man in the stairwell, and it's only when he sees the woman leaning in her doorway that he realizes. She's young, naive and ugly, illuminated by the light in her room. He can see the space between her legs and between her breasts, and shadows delineate the swell of her belly. She watches him watch her, rakes dull and starving eyes over him and curls a smile with lips that are like bruised vulva.

He sits on the sagging cot in his room and feels sick at the thought of her.

–

The docks were always Blake's territory, and that much is still the same. Step over the dead and keep walking until you find their ghosts.

Rorschach keeps back, trails him as he swaggers along the waterfront. He is a broad silhouette against the black of the Hudson, shotgun slung over his back as he pulls on the stub of a cigar. He takes one last draw before flicking the butt in an arc; it scatters brief embers into the void of the river.

Blake cuts between a pair of freight containers. He seems perfectly complacent in his patrol, hasn't looked over his shoulder even once, and that's how Rorschach knows that Blake is entirely aware that he has a tail. A consummate professional, it's not in Blake's nature to ignore this fact. Rorschach expects to be confronted very soon.

What he does not expect, as he steps out from the other end of the shipping crates, is the barrel of a shotgun wedged behind his ear. It skews his fedora and grates against the bone of his jaw when he opens his mouth.

"Good evening, Comedian." He keeps his voice perfectly level. He has never liked guns, though it would be narrow-minded of him to find fault in Blake's methods. He has always gotten results.

"Dockside is my stomping ground, newbie," Blake says. There's a compact noise as he pulls the bolt and chambers a round; at this range, the sound alone would make most men cringe like a frightened dog. "What the fuck are you doing."

"Am I cramping your style."

There's silence for a beat, and then Blake laughs, deep and smoke-rough and not at all sincere. He lowers his weapon. "Well, you got balls, I'll give you that."

Rorschach straightens his hat and turns to face him. The yellow badge smiles, pinned to Blake's harness, blithely ignorant of its eventual fate.

"Been hearing things 'bout you. Come to play with the big—the hell?"

Rorschach tilts his head and frowns, but his puzzlement doesn't last long when Blake's thick fingers prod at his cheek hard enough to push his head back. He catches Blake's wrist, feels the flex of sinew through the padded leather of the man's glove as he casts him away. "Don't touch me," Rorschach growls, shoulders drawn up tight and tense.

"Easy, tiger." Blake chuckles, routine humor that doesn't pretend to touch his eyes. He fishes a fresh cigar from his belt pouch. "Just appreciating your squishy face. That's why they call you the Inkblot, huh?"

"Tabloids have no imagination." He rolls his shoulders back, raises his chin. "Rorschach."

"So they saw your mask and picked the first thing that came into their heads. That bother you?" He bites the cap off his cigar, spits it out. "Cause there's a word for that."

"The irony hasn't escaped me," Rorschach says.

"Okay, sure, whatever. Let's get down to brass tacks: whatcha chasin' me for? See, I got a meeting with an _important associate_ here and he ain't the trusting kind. He don't take kindly to strangers, and I don't take kindly to having my mark spooked by an amateur blundering in on my game. Capisce?"

Rorschach curls his lip; two decades of experience warns him to let it go. "Tell me about Veidt," he says instead.

"Pick up a newspaper." Blake's face is illuminated in the sudden flare of his lighter; the livid scar creeping across his cheek is freshly-healed, not yet worn into his face.

"I want to know about his project," Rorschach presses.

Blake blows out a stream of pungent smoke. "The fuck should I know? You ain't much of a private dick if you think I give a damn about anything he's throwin' his Nazi gold at. Go ask his ex."

Rorschach would rather stab himself in the ear than listen to Daniel, the shade of Daniel, talk about Veidt. "Nite Owl?" he says, to cover the spark of temper that is threatening to catch. He lets it simmer.

"Yeah. Bird-boy. Feed him a cracker and he'll sing for ya." Blake snorts. "Now get the fuck out of here before I tar your scrawny ass." He leans with one foot propped against the freight container, cigar clenched between his teeth.

Rorschach wants to warn Blake about Veidt, but he remembers what Veidt told them: Blake had discovered the island while on government reconnaissance. Things are different here; with no Keene Act, Blake may never work for the government. He won't discover Veidt's plan, won't be murdered as a consequence.

The house of cards begins its swift collapse. There will be no death as a catalyst and no investigation he can use to hook Daniel's attention, to draw him in so that he will be with Rorschach when they uncover Veidt's conspiracy.

Rorschach will need a new lead.

–

Rorschach kneels on the chest of a would-be mugger, caught skulking near an ATM. He makes panicked noises and squirms, grasping at the counterfeit balisong that Rorschach housed expediently in the meat of his shoulder. Rorschach leans more heavily and catches his wrists, peels the gloves off his shaking hands. He keeps him pinned under his knee as he examines the leather and the stitching. They are black, scuffed across the knuckles and worn on the heel of the hand, but they'll do.

"Appreciated," he says, and cracks the mugger's head against the asphalt.

–

This would be another anonymous alleyway, indistinguishable from any other but for the way that Nite Owl seems to fill it.

"Hey," Nite Owl says, and falls into step far too easily. He smiles, and Rorschach wishes he would stop. Just stop it. "I think we got off on the wrong foot."

—.—

* * *

**_A/N: I am no longer updating on ff dot net - I'll be continuing this on AO3 and on my LJ. See profile for links!_**


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